NASA's Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
Didn't realize PNAS paywalled, supplement says they had to add silicon to the petroleum in order to do GCMS, which is interesting enough
*in the firmaments
> MtBSTFA derivatives are 104 times more stable to hydrolysis than their corresponding TMS derivatives and produce easily interpreted mass spectra for GC/MS.
https://www.registech.com/derivatizing-reagents/silylation-r...
EDIT: Derek Lowe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alkanes-mars
[Seems JPL are more courageous^W patient^W adaptive than MMAANG!]
Follows (p3) the actually interesting phrase: what'd they mean by that? What provoked the peer reviewers?
"It is INTERNALLY ACCEPTED by the SAM team that a signal can be assessed from a S/N of 2 and the quantification is tentatively made from any detected m/z"
On reflection on the list I gave of DARPA-likes..
[Where might our intuitions diverge?]
Couple clues for it not being simply nostalgia:
1. The right question is closer to : why do breakthroughs announced by/awarded to MAANG these past decades not pass the optimal curiosity-agency smell test? Too teleological? Cheap conspiratorial answer is that they focused on investigations too expensive for academics to disprove/replicate. Less cheap answer is SV unwittingly replicated the structural issues of pre-lost-decade Japan (shareholder-supremacy? Overoptimistic metrics?)
2. Which brings me to: cultural premiums being nolonger affordable by gradstudents/good faith middle managers across the board
(Is it related to "supervision debt"? Or "moderation-technik debt")
*Related to the information bottleneck worked upon by my undersung hero Bialek?